China Slows On Electric Cars To Focus On Fuel Efficiency

Several years ago, the U.S. auto industry worried that Chinese carmakers would use inexpensive cars to gain a foothold here, just as Japanese and Korean makers had done.

That hasn't happened, for many reasons--one being that making cars good enough to sell here is remarkably hard.

More recently, the Detroit Three worried that Chinese makers would leapfrog the industry to dominate electric-car production, backed by Chinese government policy encouraging so-called "new energy" vehicles.

That hasn't happened either.

Last summer, China began to reassess its plans to put 1 million electric cars on the roads by 2015 (the same goal, coincidentally, pursued by President Obama).